


Interred

by orphan_account



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen, Imprisonment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-06
Updated: 2010-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-05 21:10:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faith is resigned to being Angelus's jailer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interred

**Author's Note:**

> For aaronlisa.

Angelus was reciting poetry again. Faith wasn't one for literature, but she had, against her will, memorized most of his favorites. "This is why we invented TV," she said loudly. "So people would have something interesting to talk about." She stood up and stretched, cracking her knuckles above her head.

"You never were an intellectual," Angelus said. He approached the steel bars that separated them. Even with his clothes hanging in rags, he was beautiful. At times she dreamt about the texture and temperature of his skin. It was lonely in the tower, which resided neither solely in hell nor in the real world. Faith figured no one was going to grudge her a little harmless fantasy.

Angel might, but Angel was gone.

"Do you ever run out of pathetic insults?" Faith said wearily.

"I thought you liked your men to play hard to get," Angelus said. Then, apparently losing interest, he turned and began scratching at the wall. He had been doing that since the second year of his imprisonment. Faith suspected it did not speak well of his sanity, if sociopathic demons were even sane in the first place.

After a while, Angelus rubbed away the dust and said, "You might be a killer, Faith, but you were never an artist."

"They didn't set me to guard the Louvre," Faith said, "they set me to guard."

"So tell me," Angelus said, "what was Buffy's excuse when she exiled you here? Slayerettes to train? Cute guys to date? The fact that she has friends who'd miss her, and you don't?"

Faith was silent. She'd bickered with Angelus down the cold years--when your life narrowed to a single tower and its malicious occupant, you took your entertainment where you could get it--but never spoke to him of that last conversation with Buffy.

_He has to die,_ Buffy had said. She was looking straight ahead, her eyes hard and bright. _I'll send him to hell again if that's what it takes._

_No,_ Faith said, her voice more steady than she felt. _I can't let you do that._

_Can't, or won't?_

Faith knew better than to mention what she owed Angel. Instead, she said, _If there's any chance of bringing Angel back--_

_If Willow can't do it, no one can,_ Buffy said. They both knew the score: whatever had happened in the alley behind the Hyperion, Angel's soul had been ripped away so thoroughly that not even the gypsy curse could bring it back. _Do you have an alternative?_

_Lock him up,_ Faith said. _Somewhere far away, maybe not even in this world. Lock him up until someone figures out how to bring Angel back._

Buffy's mouth tightened. There was nothing of nostalgia or compassion in her right now, only dire necessity. _Someone would have to guard him,_ Buffy said. _Someone his equal in strength._

Faith stood tall, unblinking. _That could be arranged._

Even in dreams, it hurt that Buffy hadn't tried harder to talk her out of it. But they were no longer children, to cling to such resentments.

"How much longer do you think it will be before you succumb?" Angelus asked, drawing her attention back to the present.

"Succumb to what?" Faith said with a yawn.

"Yourself," he said.

"It's been over five years," she said. "I'll be here until I die of old age if that's what it takes."

He ran his hands sensually over the scratched wall as though it were composed of curves and subtle angles. Suddenly, Faith glimpsed what he saw, understood what he had been doing: scratching a portrait into the stone with infinite patience. She didn't know what expression was on her face in the stone, but she had the horrible feeling that she would watch it emerge day by agonizing day.

"You think all I want is a moment of red pleasure from your body," Angelus said, "when you've already delivered yourself to me like a gift for eternity. With each word we exchange, you become my creature."

"You know perfectly well there's no key to that cage," Faith said, "so you can't reverse-psychology me into letting you out."

"Missing the point as always." Angelus was smiling anyway. "When they come for us, do you think anyone's going to trust a Slayer who's been alone with me for the past five, ten years? Voluntarily?"

Faith didn't answer. They received weekly shipments, it was true, but Faith scarcely spoke with the men and women who hauled in the food and toiletries and pig's blood.

That night she didn't dream. There was nothing of Angel's kind eyes or Buffy's warm hands. But when she woke, she thought she heard Angel's voice, calling out in confusion. It was an old trick.

Even now it had the power to make her flinch.

Day by day, he was eroding her.

She had long ago stopped believing that Buffy would step through a portal with a witch in tow, ready to stuff Angel's soul back into Angelus. But she owed it to Angel to endure anyway. Angelus was counting on it.


End file.
